THE SPENDERS

A TALE OF THE THIRD GENERATION

BY HARRY LEON WILSON

Illustrated by O'NEILL LATHAM

1902

To L. L. J.

FOREWORD

The wanderers of earth turned to her—outcast of the older lands—
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pityinghands;
And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again!
Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow.
Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun,
Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won,"
For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddledcrowd,
And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud;
For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track,
And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the traffickingpack.
Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound;
The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground
Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth
That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth!

SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL.

CHAPTER I. The Second Generation is Removed

CHAPTER II. How the First Generation Once Righted Itself

CHAPTER III. Billy Brue Finds His Man

CHAPTER IV. The West Against the East

CHAPTER V. Over the Hills

CHAPTER VI. A Meeting and a Clashing

CHAPTER VII. The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked

CHAPTER VIII. Up Skiplap Canon

CHAPTER IX. Three Letters, Private and Confidential

CHAPTER X. The Price of Averting a Scandal

CHAPTER XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose